


Dileas gu Bas

by Lemon Drop (quercus)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-11-13
Updated: 2000-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 15:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quercus/pseuds/Lemon%20Drop





	Dileas gu Bas

_Faithful till Death_

When I died, the world lived on, as worlds will do through time and space. They spin in place around their suns, their moons around them, their tiny satellites geosynchronous and static and hovering *right* *here*.

As does my Jim.

For when I died, he remained with me, following into the nowhere neverplace and refusing to be parted. He entered my heart and I entered his. Mo poileas, my policeman, the policeman of my heart.

All time exists concurrently. We are always in the now, in the present; we are children and aged, aged men. We are married and single and promiscuous and celibate. We are all, we are all *right* *here*.

Waking from death was painful, another birth, wet and cold and so hurtful. So hurtful. I remember nothing but I remember it all. I remember Jim's voice calling me, calling my name, calling me back to him. I remember pausing to look back at him with a longing so powerful that I thought the world might stop spinning for us, might spin backwards. My heart rushed toward him and I obeyed. This isn't happening, he cried, and so it didn't happen.

It did and it didn't. All things exist at this moment, all moments occur simultaneously, and thus I died yet I died not. I died not.

I ache now, months and months later. The brief summer has left us beached on a shore we do not know. I'm no longer who I was; I don't know who I will be. I'm a policeman now, like Jim, always at his side, a scholar only of my friend, my taciturn friend who aches, as I do, months later.

My lungs are damaged. They'll always ache in winter, and when I get a cold, as I often do, it becomes bronchitis. Then Jim watches me with dark, pained eyes, his hands gentle on my back and chest. He's grown more silent in these months, his face longer and more drawn. He wears his guilt as a hair-shirt, turned inside-out so no one can see but I know it tears at him every second, every breath.

I suffered brain damage, too. Not much, but too much. I drag my left leg when I'm tired. I needed new glasses because my vision deteriorated. I am not the person I was, and yet I will always be he.

My mother weeps for me. She travels the world, fleeing knowledge of her son's death, sitting silent meditations, tears streaming down her face. She, too, is older now, and more silent, and not the same at all. Her youthful optimism has left her because she knows without a doubt that I will die again. I kiss her sweet face and remind her I live, but my death damaged her, too.

Jim. Naomi. Me. All damaged and silent.

Tha e fuar, fliuch, gaothah. It's cold, wet, windy. The Gaelic is a bitter tongue, of another dispossessed people, lost and lost and lost again. As I am lost. The diaspora. A dispossession. I left my body and wandered afar and can write these words only because Jim called me back.

I wonder why I returned sometimes. When he called, my heart responded as the soul to God. I needed no other reason: Jim called, I came. I'm coming still, following him a step behind and one to the side.

But though our hearts merged as one, we've never merged again.

I ache. My heart aches for its other half. How well it knew its partner! I remember the joy when I flung myself at Jim, the wolf and the jaguar overcoming barriers beyond life. I thought we would remain one. I wanted to remain one.

Then Jim left me.

He's here, at my side, every day. I see him now, every time I lift my head. But he left my heart and I am *half*, only half, he's broken my heart and I don't think I can live like this.

I cannot live like this.

Tha eagal air roimh choin. He's frightened of you. I hear the words in the Gaelic these days. I wonder what that means? Does it matter? Hebrew, Gaelic, Quechua, who cares. Is he frightened of me? Of our joining? Is that why he left?

I watch him across our desks. He stares into the monitor of his computer, tapping at the keyboard, scrolling through screens of information. The light lightens his eyes until they're almost silver and deepens the lines around his mouth. He looks tired and distant. Halved.

Is there hope? Perhaps everything is so wrong because I'm wrong, because I don't belong here. I died. I died. I died. And yet I died not.

A half-life, with half a heart, in a half-lit world. I watch my friend and wonder at the voices in my head. Tapadh leibh. Tapadh leibh. Thank you.

Jim's eyes move from the monitor to me and our vision mingles like snakes twisting, like ropes twining, like ribbons flying. What does he see? He's as tired as I am. Instead of bringing me back, he left half of himself there, in the neverplace he found me. He drops his eyes and the loss is a physical pain in my half-a-heart.

We exist together and apart. All things are possible for us. We have gone beyond life and returned. We have kissed death as passionately as lovers and lived. But the loss is so great, so overpowering, that I must ask myself again: is this a life worth living? I don't think I can live like this.

Another workday has ended for us and we silently gather our coats and our gloves. I follow Jim silently to the truck, as silent as he is now. For there are no words to be spoken. They've all been said, they're being said now, in an eternal present of silent misery.

Each time is the last time I'll do this. I watch the drive home closely; perhaps a memory of these things will follow me. The scent of fresh cut grass as we pass the park where we once bought lunch. The dull light of the autumn sky reflected in the harbor. The bounce of the truck over the pot-holed street. The welcome sight of the loft.

I hang my coat and stand for a moment, to look around a place that is as much a home to me as anywhere in the world. I see my books on the shelves, my CDs stacked up, my pictures on the walls. I see a life no longer lived.

Without speaking to Jim, I go to my room and sit on my bed, the bed Jim gave me. Everything is Jim, the now and the past and the future, all intertwined. I lie down and wait for whatever will happen, for I cannot live like this.

Tha e ciuiun a-nochd. It's calm tonight.

The light grows dimmer, as if I were once again falling away from this world. Deeper into the water, light flickering, glimmering, pale, pale. The loft is as silent as the sea and I am cast adrift. Alone, I sink away.

Then I feel a warm, moist pressure against my face and wake to find Jim's hand there. He's kneeling on the floor by my bed, looking at me. He sees me. I close my eyes again, but he gently shakes my head. But I can't live like this, so I keep my eyes closed and fall deeper into the water.

Then I taste Jim's breath as he breathes into me. My lungs inflate; I fill with Jim. He breathes for me, again. Again. Again. I lie quietly, his mouth on mine, and let him breathe for me. I'm a little dizzy, my ears buzz, the bed seems to tilt, and I see the jaguar again, nudging me. I flick my tail and he bites at it playfully. I roll onto my back, paws in the air, and take a deep breath. The air smells of green living things, sweet like cut grass, wet like the sea. The jaguar nuzzles me again, licking at my lips and nose. I sneeze enormously and open my eyes to see Jim smiling at me.

"God bless you," he says, and kisses me. I cannot live without this. I kiss him back, put my arms around his neck and pull him down. He lies on top of me, his full weight, so I feel his skin, his muscle, his bones, his pulse, his breath. His tongue in my mouth.

Mo charaid, tha gradh agam ort. My friend, I love you.

Does he know? He must know. I cannot speak; my lungs ache. I stroke his face, tired and soft, not the same face he wore four years ago. He kisses my hand. Does he know?

No one ever knows another, yet Jim and I do. Neither other nor the same. Half of each other. I strain to raise my head to him and this time I breathe for him, pulling the air from his lungs into mine and then back, deep sucking kisses that mingle our souls even deeper, deeper than ever I fell.

My silent Jim speaks in tongues, I discover, we discover, we are both together and alone and all things exist in this eternal present of each other. I stroke his face again and he rests his cheek against mine. Seamus. James. Mo charaid. My friend, my half-healed heart.

* * *

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.   
\--Richard Jeffries


End file.
